


we know for sure amidst this fading light

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:39:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ziggurat is a temple, and temples contain many things.  Messopotamia has a surprise in store for Bravo Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we know for sure amidst this fading light

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [2nd Multifandom Horror Commentfic Meme](http://community.livejournal.com/sharp_teeth/2807.html). Title is taken from "The Island" by The Decemberists.

_Ziggurat_ \- **n**

> a type of rectangular temple tower or tiered mound erected by the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians in Mesopotamia. The tower of Babel is thought to be one of these.

_ we know for sure amidst this fading light  
we'll not go home again. _

Gore splatters. His fingers, some missing nails, make bloody ends. She bites with sharp, white teeth.

"Please," he says. "Don't."

But she's always had a weakness for a warrior.

*

He scrambles and he fights, curses and spits. His face slams into a wall and he tastes blood. A tongue licks along his spine. He reaches out both hands for Brad and can't find him. Claws dig into bare skin.

 _Hello, little man. Hello, mine._.

Somewhere, down in the deep, deep dark, right at the base, far beyond help, he's sure that he screams.

*

They build walls out of their dead, in the end. There are great, gaping holes in the soft sandstone and he watches as Ray drags the bodies, pushing at them with his toes and the heels of his hands. Somehow, Walt is the worst. With eyes closed and bloody fingerprints hidden by the drape of his MOPP, he's baby-faced. He might as well be sleeping. He ought to help; it's his place to help, but he's stuck, pinned to the floor by the dead weight of Brad's head in his lap. He doesn't look at Brad's back, blood soaking through the cotton. It's spongey and red, a nameless, hurting thing and, suddenly, Nate feels Doc Bryan's loss more keenly ( _he looked him in the face, dark shadows under both eyes, deep as marks pressed into clay by thumbs and shook his head_. I'm sorry I can't stay, _he said, and walked away, and it wasn't until later than Nate realised that he'd called him by his Christian name_ ).

He reaches out and touches Brad's back without looking at it. Warm blood still seeping.

Warm is good. Still seeping is good.  
Warm means that he's still breathing.

Nate mumbles; he's even sure what he's saying. It's busy work. It's designed to be reassuring. Brad's short hair is matted with blood and red desert mud. He closes his eyes and tries to remember softer times, but there's nothing. There's just the darkness and the heat of the air in this tight closed space. He listens, painfully, to Ray trying to breathe through starting to cry. And that's it. That's all that's left. Nate leans there in the dark, Brad's head in his lap, and he tries not to think about what's left of Brad's back. He's very aware of Brad breathing. He shifts, trying to get comfortable with his back to the wall. Brad's combat boots are discarded in the dust. Nate rifles through memories and tries to recall if he's ever seen Brad barefoot before. Brad's face is turned against his thigh, the tip of his nose pressed against camo. Nate lifts one hand but ends up letting it rest against the back of Brad's neck. He resists the urge to read Brad's strong profile like braille.

He tries not to think about all of the mistakes that lead them down the road to here.  
There's so much here that it feels like he's failing to understand.

Too much. Nothing to be done.  
He lifts one of the water bottles and tries to get Brad to drink.

"Where are we?" croaks Brad, his lips dry and cracked, blue eyes unfocused in a way that makes Nate ache in the bit of his stomach. 

"Nowhere," he says. "Somewhere. A long, long way from here."  
He wishes that it was true.

*

He wakes up to screaming. It's a sound so incongrous that it takes him a moment to make sense of it, but, in the end, he understands.

Brad Colbert is screaming.

In the greenish, sick glow of the chemlights, they scramble to see what they can do. With Poke and Walt and Trombley already down, the Doc already gone, the others _long_ gone, it's just him and Ray, crawling on all fours in the sand. Nate sees fragments of the truth; he sees the agonising twist of Brad's spine. A mess of red meat. The bone showing through. Ray holds a bloody whip in his hands.

"What the fuck, Homes?" he mumbles and, in the half-light, his eyes are wide and dark and frightened.  
Nate doesn't even have an answer for him, except _the tower of Babylon was a ziggurat too, and look what became of them_.

"Find Doc's pack," is all that he can say.  
He hopes that there's enough styrettes for all of them, enough morphine for all of them, if that's what it comes down to, by the end.

*

In the way of dreams, he knows that he's dreaming. In a club curtained with black and gold, Brad leans forward, tan and lovely and kisses Nate firmly on the mouth. His hands roam, pushing up underneath Brad's t-shirt, sliding over the planes of warm muscles. These things never happened, could never happened ( _which is not to say that you did not think of them, guiltily, in stolen moments, in the dark_ ). On a couch in the same club, he watches the two of them writhing, slick skin, firm muscle; he watches them fuck like they mean it and, at the same time, he's standing there, watching, and he hears her at his shoulder.

" _I could give you everything you ever wanted,"_ she says, and he thinks _Ishtar_ and he thinks _courtesan of the gods_.  
And he thinks that, in the myths and the legends, even the gods die.

*

The problem is: he doesn't realise what's going to happen until it's already occurred.

They've been wandering in the dark for days now; the sky hasn't been clear of dust for nearly a week. People have faded and gone. Yesterday, Doc Bryan shook his head. It was enough; they'd let him go. He walked off, boots stirring up more dust and that was the last time that Nate had conciously thought of this place as ancestrally linked to Eden. He'd let Doc take that idea with him.

They'd seen the stone structure and decided to shelter there. Carvings on the walls. He paused and traced the feet of a bare-breasted woman with one finger. Crowned with stars. In the doorway, Brad had looked back and smiled.

Behind him, a stone slid back into place. But he was watching Brad smile.  
Nate hadn't remembered the word for ' _ziggurat_ ' before it was too late.

 

__ If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,  
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,  
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.  
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.  
And the dead will outnumber the living. 


End file.
